Ezra Levant examines Alberta’s April 9 protest against Trudeau’s carbon tax, where 50–75 flag-waving demonstrators—many tied to the 2022 Freedom Convoy—gather at a Petro-Canada truck stop near Calgary, defying police surveillance with upside-down Canadian flags and "F Trudeau" banners. Organizers like Judy Martins serve homemade meals while questioning media bias, comparing RCMP tactics to past protest overreactions. The movement frames the tax as economic sabotage, uniting diverse groups under slogans like "Axe the tax" and "Freedom Convoy," challenging Trudeau’s authority amid claims of systemic intimidation. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, are we seeing the rising of a new trucker convoy, this time against the carbon tax?
It's April 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Oh, hi, everybody.
I'm standing next to Highway 1, the Trans-Canada Highway, from Calgary down that way.
You'll go to Canmore, then Banff, and then if you keep going, you'd reach the BC border.
This is about 15 minutes west of the city of Calgary, but it's still pretty close to Calgary.
That way is a Petro-Canada truck stop, and it's a major artery, not just for tourists, but of course for industrial trucks, trucks coming and going, even bringing things from British Columbia.
It's a major artery.
And this is where eight days ago, a stop the carbon tax protest coalesced.
You might recall that there were protests across the country, basically in every city in the country, and they were championed in many ways by Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservative Party, who's making the carbon tax a central issue in his campaign.
He's calling the next election a carbon tax election.
I think it's very wise to do so.
And incredibly, a variety of provincial premiers have joined his side of the argument, including liberals.
Who to thunk it?
Liberal premiers like, for example, the premier of Newfoundland saying, please relent, Justin Trudeau.
We just can't handle the additional 23% carbon tax on our cost of everything.
It's not just what you see at the pump when you fill up for gas.
It's everything that you use that rode on a truck, everything that was grown in a farmer's field, everything that was shipped.
I don't know if you can hear it, but I would say at least a quarter of the big trucks that are passing by Highway 1, as they see this protest, give it a honk.
You can hear that one honking right now.
And that one too.
It's very affirming for these protesters.
Now, I come here, I say, eight days after the protest really got started in earnest.
And then it lingered for another day.
And I thought, oh, well, they're just having fun.
But here we are nine days into it.
And there is still a core crew here.
I estimate there's about 50 to 75 people right now on this side of the highway and a similar number on that side of the highway.
We're going to walk through it and look at some of the signs and the flags.
But what I've learned is that because it's a Tuesday, obviously it's a skeleton crew here.
It's not the largest because the thing about Albertans is they tend to work for a living.
So a lot of the folks who are here right now are retired or they're masters of their own schedule.
I understand to expect a very large crowd on the weekend as there was this past weekend.
In fact, I kept seeing these.
Our friend Robert Kraitchik joined Angelika Toy to cover this event on the weekend and I thought I got to get out there to see with my own eyes.
Another thing that concerned me in the early days of this protest was the police response.
As you may know, Alberta does not have its own provincial police force.
It contracts with the federal government to deploy Justin Trudeau's RCMP.
You may say it's unfair to call it Trudeau's RCMP.
After what we've learned at the Chinese Influence Commission, I think it's fair to call all the police and security agencies Justin's boys.
We saw how the police were weaponized and politicized during the trucker convoy.
And here's some imagery of stone-faced, scowling, and in some case, masked RCMP basically doing the stormtrooper march.
This is from a week ago.
take a look.
Well, today
I could not find evidence of police right here, but I do spot a trailer vehicle that we're going to go inspect.
That, I've been told, is either a spy vehicle or a jamming vehicle to jam live streams emanating from here.
We'll go and check it out.
But let's now walk through this part of the protest.
Then we're going to go over to the other side of the highway and see what's there.
And then I see a group of vehicles parked about two kilometers away.
Now, that's a sort of a staging area.
This interchange is a busy place.
You can see it's actually the interchange of two different highways.
There's a truck stock.
There's a parking lot.
I have a hunch that the police have actually decamped from right here and are about a kilometer away.
It's just a hunch, nothing more than speculation.
So we'll make that as part of our trip.
So let's go and talk to the people now.
The first thing you notice when you come to this, you see it from half a mile away, are the flags.
And the flags, sometimes they're normal Canadian flags.
Sometimes, like that lady over there, they're waving a flag upside down, which is regarded as a sign of distress.
Standing by the side of the highway, giving us a friendly wave with their friendly doggy.
Especially in nautical situations, an upside-down flag means distress.
Of course, there are specialty flags.
The F Trudeau brand.
I tell you, if I would have thought of that two years ago, I'd be a millionaire.
The number of people in Canada who express their patriotism and their disgust with Trudeau simultaneously with the F Trudeau flag is astonishing.
But it's more normally just proud Canadians.
And I like the fact that Canadians are re-appropriating the national symbols.
I don't know if anyone under the age of 40 knows this, but I recall in the 1990s, the Liberal Party tried to own the symbols of nationalism.
You might recall there was a referendum in Quebec in 1995 that came within half a percent of leaving Canada.
And so the Liberal Party poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Quebec in flags and logos and branding.
And it really blurred the lines between the Liberal Party and the country.
In fact, the fact that our flag looks the way it does is a choice, the colors and everything of what they call the Pearson pen.
And it was Lester Pearson, the liberal, who chose our flag this way.
And I remember that a reaction to that by some conservatives was to reject those symbols because they had been co-opted by the liberals.
Well, we're co-opting them back.
And it's a delight to see that the patriots who believe in freedom and our symbols are small government critics of lockdowns and carbon taxes.
And it's amazing to see some of the regime media actually say that the Canadian flag or the word freedom are hostile, conservative, conspiracy theory comments.
It tells you how successfully our side is at co-opting the symbols.
Co-opting Symbols00:03:59
You can see there's some vehicles.
This vehicle is from beautiful British Columbia, if I'm reading the license plate correctly.
Lots of flags.
And look at this.
An Alberta V. Let's just look at some of the expressions there.
Axe the tax.
Freedom.
I support Alberta oil.
F. Trudeau.
We've got one, two, three of those.
Mandate freedom.
Camp Hope.
Follow me to freedom.
Live in fear.
It makes you easier to control.
We did that.
That's a carbon tax.
There's the Canada goose.
Wow, there's a lot of stickers on this car.
Hold fast.
It's not about pro or anti-vax views.
It's Canadians United for the freedom to choose.
This is a freedom vehicle.
Absolutely.
Truck off, Turtea.
You know what?
We got to get some of this merch in the Rebel News store.
Look at that one.
I choose to stand.
I'm having some troubles reading that one because it's waving in the wind.
Freedom convoy.
I put it to you that the overlap between people who went to the trucker convoy in Milk River or in Coots, Alberta, or even who went all the way out to Ottawa, the overlap in freedom orientation between them and this stop the carbon tax manifestation is a very high correlation.
It's like a Venn diagram that's a complete overlap.
Now you can see there's some fun stuff here.
There's some golf putting and I forget the name of that game is Plinko or something.
That's, I think, a leftover from when there were hundreds of people here, including kids.
Like I say, on this side and on that side combined, I think it's probably down to about 150.
But the RVs are here.
And, you know, let's take a look here.
Of course, you can hear, I don't know if you can pick it up on the microphone, but you can hear in the background, I think one out of every four vehicles with a big industrial horn that goes by gives it a honk.
Now, of course, my favorite part of any protest would obviously be the kitchen.
There's lots of dry goods here right now, and they had, I see some propane barbecues.
They're not barbecuing right now, but they've got lots of food here.
And the fact that these RVs are, like, look at this RV.
It's up on blocks.
These folks aren't just here for a few hours.
Some of them have been here for eight days since this thing started.
Here, let's keep walking.
I just want to show people the feeling of it.
Now, don't get me wrong.
When I landed in Ottawa, when the trucker convoy arrived there, I got there on a Friday night, just when it started.
It was astounding.
There were thousands of people.
They were all circling, driving, honking their horns, waving flags.
It really felt like a Stanley Cup victory parade or something.
It was electric, and it was the entire downtown.
This is a fraction of that.
But like I say, it's a weekday and it's sort of the skeleton crew.
I don't know what the future of this is other than it's the only time I can think of in probably two decades that Canadians have had this kind of a protest over tax matters.
Now there's other issues here too, of course.
F. Trudeau mandate freedom.
Lots of folks here axe the carbon tax.
F. Trudeau looks like some firewood.
I'm not sure if that's for a barbecue or staying warm, but we've got some firewood.
A little bit of guitar.
Looks like they're inflating a bouncy castle.
Axe the tax.
It's quite a manifesto here.
Citizens are angry.
Working Class Struggles00:15:28
They've truly had enough.
A carbon tax imposed on them.
This existence is getting tough.
Oh, it's a rhyme.
It's a poem.
The people are gathering coast to coast.
Their messages are loud and clear.
Access tax for Canadians as their livelihood is in arrears.
Tents popping up across these lands.
Look at my makeshift home.
Barely making a living.
So on the streets I roam.
That's very sad, but it's true.
Food bank usage is out of control, for example.
Housing is out of control, the prices of it.
The food banks can't satisfy the masses.
Got my hand out for a dime.
Wandering, scrounging, and praying.
I feel I've lost my mind.
Once upon a time, I had a home that was comfortable and free.
Then government got greedy.
Oh no, it could never happen to me.
That's not a bad poem, by the way.
And I think it illustrates the shift.
The parties of the left in Canada, the NDP, the Green Party, and of course the Liberals, they always claim to stand for the working man.
I mean, when you think about it, the NDP was formed with a coalition of farmers and factory workers.
They really were for the working man.
They're not anymore.
They're led by an elitist snob, Jagmeet Sing, in the case of the NDP, or an American radical activist in the case of the Green Party, Elizabeth Mayne, not that I've got anything against Americans.
And Justin Trudeau, his elite lifestyle, his, I remember when he went to Jamaica and got an $80,000 vacation this last Christmas from a friend as a gift.
And he said, oh, we were just staying in a friend's place.
Every Canadian does that.
Every Canadian stays in an $80,000 luxury hotel over Christmas.
They couldn't be more out of touch with ordinary working people.
And it's interesting to me to see Pierre Polyev pivot towards a kind of working class conservatism.
That was one of Trump's innovations as well.
You'd think Trump is a billionaire.
He's flashy, gold everything, private jets.
But he had the sensibilities of the working class because he actually was a builder.
He was comfortable around working class people on a job side.
He knew how to get things done.
And he had a respect for working people.
Even Michael Moore, the hardcore left-wing filmmaker, had a wonderful clip about that in the lead up to the 2016 election.
I don't know if you've ever seen this.
Listen to Michael Moore, who I regard as a communist, talk about why he thought Donald Trump would win.
And when Michael Moore said this in 2016, people gasped.
They said, what are you talking about?
They called him disloyal for saying it.
But listen to his reasoning, how he describes Donald Trump, and compare that to Piero Polyev and how Polyev talks about people's issues like inflation, what Polyev calls housing hell, and other things.
Take a look at this video of Michael Moore.
I don't often throw to his videos.
Take a look.
Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor executives and said, if you close these factories as you're planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I'm going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody's going to buy them.
It was an amazing thing to see.
No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives.
And it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Brexit states.
You live here in Ohio.
You know what I'm talking about.
Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting.
And it's why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump.
He is the human Molotov cocktail that they've been waiting for.
The human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.
And on November 8th, Election Day, although they lost their jobs, although they've been foreclosed on by the bank, next came the divorce, and now the wife and kids are gone.
The car's been repoed.
They haven't had a real vacation in years.
They're stuck with the shitty Obamacare bronze plan where you can't even get a fucking Percocet.
They've essentially lost everything they had except one thing.
The one thing that doesn't cost them a cent and is guaranteed to them by the American Constitution, the right to vote.
They might be penniless, they might be homeless, they might be fucked over and fucked up.
It doesn't matter because it's equalized on that day.
A millionaire has the same number of votes as the person without a job.
One.
And there's more of the former middle class than there are in the millionaire class.
So on November 8th, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be handed a ballot, close the curtain, and take that lever or felt pen or touchscreen and put a big fucking X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very system that has ruined their lives.
Donald J. Trump.
Yeah, I think that there is a working class rebellion against the carbon tax.
If you recall the whole ideology behind the carbon tax, the thesis behind it, if you listen, if you actually listen to what Justin Trudeau and Stephen Gilbo and Catherine McKenna and the likes of them have said, they've said it's to change people's behavior, to put a price on pollution.
That's what they call any emanation of carbon dioxide.
My point is, they want it to be painful.
Being painful is the whole point.
It's what causes you to use less fuel.
Make your house colder in the winter.
Don't put your air conditioning on in the summer.
Take fewer vacations by airplane.
Take the bus instead of a car.
All of those nudged behaviors are the point of the carbon tax.
If you actually listen to Trudeau and his like, the whole point of the carbon tax is to be painful, to shift your behavior to other things that don't use carbon.
What a pleasure to hear the horns hawking as they go by.
Let's keep walking around.
How are you?
Good.
Where'd you come in from today?
I came in from Andrew.
Andrea, yeah.
And how long have you been here?
I've been here since Tuesday.
Tuesday, yeah.
And are you staying out here or are you going home to sleep?
I'm a little too old to stay in the Dodge Hotel, so I go home at the end of the day.
Yeah.
Why would you come back here so much?
I got to support this, man.
I mean, I mean, I'm hearing stories of Single moms that can't afford groceries and they got to pick between groceries and buying gas for their kids.
And this is the stories I'm hearing.
It's sad.
It's a sad situation.
I hear that the numbers are expected to increase on the weekend.
Is that how it was last weekend?
That's how it was.
Yeah, this weekend was a real good turnout.
So we keep up the pressure.
Hopefully, they'll get the message, right?
Now, I remember the trucker convoy a couple years ago.
This has the same sort of vibe.
The bouncy castle right over there, if you want to take a shot of it.
I mean, that's really reminiscent of what we saw in Ottawa.
Back then, politicians were afraid of the trucker convoy at first.
I remember Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the Conservatives, wouldn't allow his MPs to go visit.
Have there been any politicians of any level who have visited that you know of?
Not that I know of.
No.
No.
Now, Pierre Polyev himself, the leader of the federal conservatives, uses the phrase axe the tax, spike the hike.
He really is emphasizing this.
He says he wants the next election to be a carbon tax election.
No one from the Conservative Party has come by even to shake hands and had flyers.
Nobody has.
Nobody has.
I wonder why that is.
Do you think they're afraid of it, or do you think they're just busy doing other things?
You know, I don't really know.
I don't know either.
I'm just asking.
I mean, all I know is I got to do it for my kids because my kids today, they'll never afford a house, and I don't like the way Canada's going.
I just don't like it.
You know what I've seen in polling?
Most people think it's headed in the wrong direction.
Most people think the next generation will do more poorly than we have.
And it's, you know, all of progress is our kids do better than we do.
And I don't think a lot of people think that's going to be how it is now.
Yeah, you're right on that.
You're right.
And I tell you, I have to say to you guys, you guys are doing a great job because I don't listen to the mainstream media no more.
It's all bull.
I seen it come to you guys and stuff like that online.
Way more, way more information.
I appreciate that.
Our reporter Angelique Atoya has been here all week.
And we had our reporter Robert Krachik come in on the weekend.
He's down in Lethbridge covering the Coots prosecutions.
They're prosecuting some of the men who were at the protest two years ago.
And I'm a little bit worried that the police want to get involved here.
There were some police really heavy in the first few days.
Has the police had a lighter touch since then?
Well, I remember on Monday, it wasn't too bad.
That was the first.
The second is when we had, I think it was either 20 or 30 officers lined up in the ditch.
There was a gentleman who went down there to shake their hands and they wouldn't acknowledge him.
They wouldn't shake his hands.
They didn't have any badge numbers on or nothing like that.
And it's just wrong.
Yeah, we saw a video that we'll show a clip of that right now.
Take a look.
Must be pretty proud of yourselves.
Morning, officers.
Yeah, I'll film you too.
Don't worry. You get a good view?
They came in marching.
Left, left, right, left.
Apparently, we're not allowed to protest, people.
Oh, yeah, they're in there, left, right, left, marching.
Here's Justin Trudeau's army right here, guys.
Look at him smiling on your face.
You're not allowed to protest.
They already know who I am.
They're going to know who you are, too.
We'll zoom right in on them.
Look at that.
Pretty proud man right there today.
Oops, sorry guys.
There's tons of them here today.
These are peaceful people.
There's even some kids here.
I understand that the protesters worked with the RCMP to limit one lane on that first day so it was all in constant communication with the cops.
To have that sort of show of force moment is a kind of political bullying.
There's no criminal element here.
No, exactly.
I mean, we're peacefully protesting here.
I mean, that's what we're doing.
It's our constitutional right to do that, right?
So, you know.
Well, listen, thanks for talking with me.
You betcha.
Keep up the good work.
Right on.
All right, well, let's keep walking around.
Hey, let me just take a look at this side.
There's a lot of great signs here.
I am a Canadian.
I will not sit down.
I will not shut up.
I will not comply.
I want my country back.
Yeah, we should all want our country back.
Justin Trudeau, or as I refer to him, Minnie Z, like Minnie Me.
Minnie Z is referring to him as Canada's chairman, like China's chairman.
But him and Seng and the rest of the WEF puppets want us to believe that we will own nothing and we will be happy.
Well, no, we won't be, and that's why we're out here fighting this.
I see some more vehicles are arriving.
Even as we're talking, one, two, three, four more vehicles.
Looks like they're decked out.
They've got some flags.
I'm not sure if those are painted on the hoods or just a fabric flag, but that's pretty fun.
You know, you're not wrong when you talk about the World Economic Forum.
Carbon taxes are just assumed that everyone's...
I've been to the World Economic Forum, not inside the sessions, but Rebel News sends reporters outside to scrum the politicians.
Every single one of them supports a carbon tax, but I've never met a real person who says, yeah, jack up my carbon tax.
It's quite a distinction between the ruling elites and normal people.
It's so stark the difference.
Well, listen, nice to meet you, and thanks for showing us your sign.
You're welcome.
Right on.
Well, let's keep walking around a bit.
She's the organizer.
Hi, I'm Ezra.
Hi, nice to meet you, Ezra.
What's your name?
My name is Judy Martins.
And Judy, have you been here since the beginning?
I've been here since the night before the beginning.
Oh, wow.
Haven't gone anywhere.
I've been working on my sunburn and, yeah, holding the line.
You know, it's pretty gorgeous out here.
I'm born and raised in this part and just seeing the mountains and it's a bit of a breeze, but it's sunny.
Absolutely gorgeous.
What's the weather like being this past week?
Has it been cold or what's it been like?
Well, we had quite a bit of snow last week.
Yep, a couple of days of snow and a couple of people brought out the shovels.
They shoveled everything from like the scale to right up to everybody's campers.
So yeah, we've had all sorts.
It reminds me of the trucker convoy.
When they were in Ottawa, they swept the streets, they tidied up.
Yep, picked up garbage, fed the homeless, clothed the homeless, all of the above.
Yeah, it's been that kind of experience here, the way people have just come together with donations and it's been wonderful.
I'm so happy to be here.
I've seen, I mean, we're here on a weekday, so obviously a lot of folks in Alberta work.
What was the attendance like on the weekend?
I saw some estimates.
What would you say it was?
At least 200 people.
I heard even higher.
Oh, well, definitely.
Well, I didn't want to overestimate.
So, yeah, definitely 200 people, but not including horses and children.
Yeah, so I guess we could go up to probably 220, 250.
What did you hear, Ezra?
Well, I heard 500, but that's just what I heard.
And that's why I want to check the facts with you.
I love the fact that, and I don't know if it's being picked up on the mic, but there's a constant affirmation with the Honk Honk.
And like, I mean, you could get bored out here.
You could start to think, how much time am I going to spend out here?
Like, by the way, some of these honking, like some of these professional, serious horns that semi-trailers are, it's not like a meet, meet, it's like they have musical, like the letter, like they're really funny, actually.
200 People Strong00:14:01
It's like they're saving them just for us.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like a song, some of the honking.
A symphony.
A symphony.
Yeah, absolutely.
A symphony.
Yeah, we have all sorts of honks going.
And honestly, it's all through the night, too.
So I've been here since, yeah, like the night before, April 1st, and it's been at night.
People going by honking, and it's lovely.
It's like such a great lullaby for all Canadians.
Now, there's a lot of RVs here.
Are you staying in an RV?
Yeah, I've got that one right there.
I've been staying in the back there.
Now, I haven't seen RCMP officers here now, but I saw a video of them before.
Yeah, I'm the liaison, too, so I've got their phone numbers.
And ever since I got here, yeah, the Monday morning, ever since, yeah, at 7.15 a.m., I met them down at the A ⁇ W at the Petropass.
And we've had six different ones, three sets of two, keeping the communication going.
Honestly, what happened on Tuesday, they were mortified because I had just finished telling them that we weren't going to be going and blocking any kind of lane.
And unfortunately, the call had already come out.
And those, yeah, the people standing in the mud there, they really didn't want to be there.
And it was pointless.
And actually, it worked against them because we had way more support.
And it made quite a spectacle.
Oh, they look like assholes.
Let me just say it.
Yeah, well, yeah, for lack of a better word, yeah, they looked like assholes.
You know, I'm absolutely certain that a number of the same police who were dispatched to the Milk River and the Coots protest two years ago are here as well.
And there was some police misconduct there.
And they were absolutely pressured by the Prime Minister's office to gin up a story.
You might recall that the arrests in Coots were one day before Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.
They needed a pretext.
And that is bad behavior.
Police should never take political instructions or run political errands.
Other than that moment of the cops doing their little stormtroopers thing, has there been any police misconduct?
None that I've seen whatsoever.
In fact, they've gone above and beyond and they got us signs down that way and the other way to kind of just let every of the police.
I saw those.
Yep, those are the liaisons.
We didn't even know they were going to do that.
They had to go through the Alberta Ministry of Transportation.
They kept getting shut down, shutting down.
But they made it happen and that was above and beyond.
So they've been more than accommodating and really good in my opinion.
Well, I'm very glad to hear that.
I think the national temperament has changed.
I think the freedom movement has awakened.
And I think that unlike last time when the leader of the opposition, Aaron O'Toole, didn't have a lot of time for protesters, Pierre Polyev is very much on the file of AXTAX.
I asked one other gentleman earlier and he said that no politicians have come by.
No, we haven't had any politicians come by.
There was a gentleman, a former MP.
Who's that?
Do you remember?
I can't remember his name, but we've managed to kind of convince him to show.
I told him to come and break bread with us and kind of just, you know, just hang out with us and get the stories because it's one thing to do lip service and another thing to like talk out of both ends of your mouth.
I'd like to see Danielle Smith here, actually.
It'd be really nice to see her.
You know, and there's no reason why not to because, you know, there's a few F Trudeau flags, but nothing we all haven't seen before.
And frankly, it's a healthy expression of dissent.
It's a peaceful expression.
We have the right to say F Trudeau in Canada.
I'm not saying it's polite.
Well, it's not just in Canada, it's all over the world.
I had a video from New Zealand sent to me where somebody had an F Trudeau bumper sticker on the vehicle in front, and she sent it to me.
In New Zealand?
In New Zealand, in New Zealand.
I can show it to you, Ezra.
Absolutely.
So, I mean, it's a general feeling around the world.
Definitely, when he invoked the Emergencies Act, illegally, I may add, and then froze people's bank accounts.
He will never live that down.
And he really, I'd love for him to resign.
I don't think he'll get any kind of dignity back at this point.
You know what?
My view is he's an authoritarian who actually doesn't care what people think about him.
If he can be popular, great.
But he really is about the power and exerting his will.
In fact, there's sort of a sick joy I think he sometimes gets when people are swearing at him or protesting him.
It's sort of like he's laughing at them, saying, you can't touch me.
Rage all you want.
I think there's a sick aspect to him.
When he says he admires communist China, when he embraces Fidel Castro, I think he's showing us his role models.
Absolutely.
No, I know.
People can be booing and hissing.
It doesn't matter if you're supporting, you know, you've got your Palestinian flag flying, you've got your Israeli flag flying, it doesn't matter.
He, classic narcissist.
It just goes in one ear and out the other, and it's probably because there's nothing in between his ears to begin with.
Let me ask you one last question.
I'm based out east, so I came out here.
I wanted to see with my own eyes.
But we've had reporters here since actually the Monday.
My colleague Angelika Toy, and then over the weekend, Robert Kraczyk.
So we're interested in this sort of thing because we like populism and conservatism and freedom, and we're skeptics of the carbon tax and environmental extremism.
That's us.
Can you tell me how you feel the coverage from the mainstream media has been?
Has it been fair?
Have they got your side of the story?
What do you think of their coverage?
Well, they've definitely been out here since Monday.
Because I'm the admin for the Facebook group for the nationwide protest against the carbon tax.
They wanted to make sure that, because I've been living and breathing it for a month now, they were out here.
I took it upon myself to kind of just, you know, so that there's a cohesive message.
They have been more than fair.
All of them are 100% against the carbon tax.
It's affecting every single Canadian, every walk of life, and it's something that can unite us all, and it will.
Even Trudeau's CBC?
I spoke to them.
Yes, they were here yesterday, CBC out of Calgary.
They were here and they did an interview with a few people, took them around, showed them around, and invited them to have some food with us.
And yeah, they asked me a couple of interesting questions.
They were the ones who asked me if there has been any politicians appear had come out.
And I said no, but you know what?
It'd be interesting to see if Trudeau actually is even watching this.
I doubt it, but it'd be interesting to know.
Oh, I think he is watching this.
I think he's hypersensitive.
And I think he still has a grudge because some of these people were people who protested against him two years ago.
I just want to add something.
We've had so many people, not just this location, but in all the locations where we've had this carbon tax protest, people who have never protested in their life coming out, showing support.
There was a gentleman here with a van.
He was here for five days, never protested before.
So definitely people rolling up the trucks because we're on a scale right now.
So they pull up, they use the scale, they roll down their windows, and they say, yep, we don't want this carbon tax.
Well, and we hear the honking continuously.
Can you tell me your name one more time, please?
My name is Judy Martins, J-U-D-Y-M-A-R-T-E-N-S.
Great to talk with you.
Thanks for your time.
Of course.
All right.
Well, why don't we just walk down a little bit more, see what we see, and then we'll hop across to the other side of the road, just see what it's like there.
And then I want to go take a look and see what we can see if there's any police in the staging area.
So let's go and do that.
There's a generator here, so I'm going to move a little bit away from it as I talk.
But I saw this giant poster board of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
And I ask you, when was the last time you've seen any sort of left-wing protest that talked about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and actually showed it?
I've never seen that before.
There's about five more vehicles and some more.
There's some more tents here.
There's some serious tents, including tents with stovetops in them.
The RVs are a great sign because when you got the RVs, those folks have staying power.
They can cook.
They often have showers and, of course, bathrooms.
And of course, just half a kilometer up that way is Petra Canada, which has sort of a convenience store section to it.
And there's an AW there.
Lots more flags.
I see a Quebec flag, Alberta flag, Canadian flag.
What other flags?
There was a kind of a New Zealand flag we were pointing to earlier.
I saw the stars and stripes.
Lots of Freedom Deck House.
I assume that's for firewood.
What else could it be for?
Hi, how you doing?
I'm good.
Great.
Looks like you got a whole operation here.
The lady brought meatballs and fresh rice, and she's feeding us like she said she did at the Freedom Convoy.
Who brought that?
I'm not too, that lady over there that's taking pictures.
She's doing pork chops tomorrow, and she's taking really good care of us.
Good to see you.
She's just bringing, she's just catering this whole thing.
Yes, she is.
Right now she is.
We're all sounding together and pulling out together and bringing food.
I'd like you shirt on the right side of history.
IamFreeCanadian.ca.
Good stuff.
Thank you.
And I see some indigenous insignia.
Yes.
I follow the native culture a lot.
I love it.
And we're here to stand together and pray together.
We need to stand together.
Well, it's nice to- We have these taxes we need to address.
Well, you got a whole set up here and the catering from the city.
That's amazing.
I won't keep you from your lunch.
Cheers.
I understand that you have been catering this event.
Tell me about that.
Well, it all started with the Freedom Convoy 2022 I was part of.
And this is my extended family.
So I took it upon myself to come out and cook meals for them.
And it's all homemade from scratch.
And yeah, it's out of love.
Well, it looks amazing.
I saw chili.
I saw what I think were meatballs.
I saw ham.
I saw buns.
I mean, all homemade buns.
And the ham has a black cherry glaze on it with a hot pepper sauce.
And the vegetables are all with a Parmesan garlic sauce on them.
And the rice is a peel off with fresh vegetables.
You know, if we put this video up, everyone's going to want to come here.
They're going to come here just for the lunch.
Come for the lunch.
Stay for the freedom.
Well, you know what?
If they want to come and eat, they got to come and stand here and support our Canadian world here.
We need help.
And our world is in a disastrous state right now.
And you know what?
The more people that come out, the better it is for us to show our love and our support for our Canada.
Some eggs and bacon, and there's the ham.
And oh, I see the chili, there's the ham, and I see the chili over there.
And the meatballs are more chili, and some veggies and rice.
There's that homemade bread.
And there's a lot more stuff.
There's a lot of cooking here.
You know, I remember my very first political campaign when I was very young.
I worked for Ralph Klein.
And every restaurateur in the city brought chafing dishes worth of grub.
Frankly, it was my favorite part of the campaign.
And I think that, oh my gosh, look at that.
Like, look at it here.
That's got to be 72 eggs and all sorts of apples and bread and buns and rich crackers.
And I think I see some pasta there.
Wow, these folks, these folks, they'll feed an army.
So we're on the other side.
We were there.
We had a great chat with everybody.
And I see you're holding the sign, What are you doing to act the tax?
What's your name?
Yeah, my name is Sue.
Yeah, I'm curious to know what other people are doing because this is what we're doing.
Are you from Calgary or from out of town?
I'm from Cochrane, just up the highway.
Good for you.
I thought there was no excuse for me not to come out and support.
So I've been here since day one and do what I can like all these folks are.
Well, that's wonderful.
There's a lot of variety of flags.
The F Trudeau ones make me chuckle.
There's the Don't Tread on Me and En Francais ne Marchais pas sur moi.
You know, that's that's, and it's a goose.
I mean, that's in America, they would call that the Gadsden flag with a snake.
Here it's with a goose.
That makes me chuckle.
So what's the reaction being?
There's a lot of horn honking and support.
Yeah, mostly support, I'd have to say.
Most people are really kind and behind this 100%.
We still get the middle finger, and I don't understand that because we're fighting for everybody.
We're not out here because we have nothing better to do.
We're out here because we care.
Yeah, I mean, I just have trouble thinking who would want to pay more taxes.
And if you really, really, really want to, go ahead.
Why make the rest?
I mean, if you want to pay more tax time, just cut the government a bigger check.
I just wonder why anyone would do that.
Exactly.
We're puzzled with the same thing.
Solar Panel Spies?00:07:51
I don't really understand it.
I don't know why there aren't thousands out here because there should be.
This is going to affect us all.
I'm here for my grandchildren.
This is my other one, too.
Stand up, Canadians.
Everyone knows what that means.
I like your style.
Now, who else is here?
Where are people from?
So the weekend was wonderful.
I don't know if you were out here on the weekend, but there were families here with little kids trying to set an example for their kids that you stand up for what you believe in, right?
So lots of families.
It was really, really busy on the weekend.
During the week, it's quieter.
Only those of us who can be out here are here, right?
Most people are just trying to earn a living, let's face it.
Now, you're a very eloquent spokesman, but I also sense that you're new to politics.
Yes, I am.
In fact, I didn't care about politics until just a few years ago.
I feel very embarrassed to tell you that, but it's true.
So about 500 meters east of the main protest area is this vehicle that you can clearly see from the protest area.
And people said it had solar panels on it, and they said it was some sort of a spy trailer.
And I was frankly a little bit skeptical, but now that I've walked over here, that's absolutely what it is.
I'm not sure if those are solar panels.
They might be.
They sort of look like it.
But frankly, they might be a sensor of some sort.
I don't know an electronic sensor, but I absolutely am certain if you just come around here that those cameras, which are precisely aimed at the protesters, are absolutely spying on them.
Now, I think you can hear there's a generator inside.
There's an exhaust fan for the generator.
So I don't know if those are solar panels.
It would seem odd that you have solar panels pointing sideways to begin with.
And it would seem odd to have solar panels and a diesel motor inside.
So I'm not sure if those are solar panels.
They mean maybe some sort of other electronic sensor.
We've seen in the past police, when, for example, they were clamping down on churches, sent people into the churches, sent police officers into the churches with a kind of cell phone scanning technology that would grab the ID of all the cell phones in the venue.
So I'm not an expert enough to say, are those solar panels on the side of a comms trailer that has a diesel engine, or is that some sort of spycraft?
I don't know.
But I can say with complete certainty that those cameras up there are spying.
And I imagine that they're there for two reasons.
First of all, just to record everything and document everything.
And there's not a large police presence here today.
So that's a live stream probably being watched by various police forces, the Calgary Police, the RCMP.
Wouldn't surprise me one bit if some Trudeau cabinet ministers were keeping an eye on things.
But I know from experience, not just in Canada, but in the United Kingdom, that a central police tactic these days is to take high resolution video of any protest and use facial recognition technology to build a database of who's there.
And when you think about it, everyone who's milling around and coming and going, they're showing their face, but they're not checking in to be registered.
So believe it or not, the only people who have a total list of everyone who came here, it's not the protest organizers.
It's the cops.
Here, come around the other side.
Let's see if there's a solar panel, so to speak, on the other side.
There is not.
So that lends me, it leads me to believe that those are not actually solar panels, that those may be some sort of other sensor.
That's just a raw guess on my part, but that's absolutely a surveillance camera.
We walked through the parking lot of the Petro Canada here and could not find any obvious police.
I would imagine the same sort of police intelligence agents, the spies of the police force that were deployed to the trucker protest in Coots, Alberta and Milk River, Alberta are being deployed here.
And I don't like that one bit because we saw legal and police misconduct during the trucker convoys.
And I'm worried that there's too many police and politicians who want a do-over.
They have a vengeance in them.
Some of the people at that protest, obviously, were at the trucker convoy two years ago.
They're having another go at it.
And I'm worried that the cops want another go at it too.
I'm standing over to the side.
You can see there's some infrastructure here for Port-a-Potties.
And I think some of these vans have, or these RVs have similar things.
These folks are here for a while.
Now, let me reintroduce you to my friend Angelique Toy, who's been here all week.
Angelika was telling me about the police presence that was here early on, and I want to draw your attention to some bushes in the background.
So what did you see here?
And I understand you have some footage, but first just tell us what we're going to look at.
On April 1st, around 7 p.m., there were around 20 what looked like to be Calgary police vehicles lined up just down on the back road back there behind the bushes.
Sort of hiding?
Yes, definitely sort of hiding.
And I took a drive down, and by the time I got there, they had driven away, but there was one vehicle left.
It was unmarked, and the back was kind of open.
So I got a shot of what was in it beside it, and it looked like they were definitely spying on the protesters here.
So we got a shot of that.
Yeah, you know, I wonder whose jurisdiction or who, because this is outside the Calgary city limits.
This is RCMP territory.
I don't know.
I mean, obviously, I'm not saying Calgary police cannot operate outside of the city.
They probably have some agreement to do so.
But the fact that they had such a massive police protest, police response to a peaceful political protest, why?
There's no indication whatsoever that there would be violence.
Who would they be violent against in the middle of nowhere in the countryside?
Like the only critters around here are cattle.
What on earth were the police doing other than intimidation?
And I find that outrageous.
I definitely agree with you, Azara.
And the police presence was just a huge overreaction because all we see here are people that just, they love their country.
They love people and they want to get their word out.
They want their voices heard and they want their government to change what has been hurting them.
So the police to have such a strong presence as if this was some threat to the country was unbelievable.
Yeah, you know what?
The contrast between how they police the truckers two years ago for the COVID protests, the truckers this year for the carbon tax protests versus what the Hamas protesters get away.
I just can't get over that.
I got to think if I want to come back on the weekend because it sounds like it's going to be a bigger attendance there.
For sure, we'll have other Rebel Jews journalists, but I enjoy the feeling.
It does give me that echo of what we experienced that day in Ottawa.
And I can't say it enough.
I use the word festival feeling.
It was sort of like not Woodstock, but there was a harmony and people from different backgrounds coming together, different cities, different ethnicities, different classes, and they were united in purpose.
Days Spent, Memories Made00:00:32
That was a wonderful feeling.
A lot of people who were at that trucker convoy, the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa two years ago, even though it was a crisis, even though terrible things were happening, and even though it was minus 20, people who were there look back on it very fondly because they were back, they were in a rare moment of united purpose with their fellow Canadians.
I look back on those days I spent there as something I'll never forget.